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Music as Dharma with Alexander deVaron

  • 2 days ago
  • 2 min read

On June 25, we gathered on Zoom, with Bill sitting at Alex deVaron's piano, for a conversation about music, presence, and dharma. Alexander deVaron is a composer, music theorist, and longtime Buddhist teacher who began teaching in Shambhala in 1986 and spent five years living at Karme Choling. His primary teachers have been Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, and Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, and he has spent decades exploring where Buddhism and music actually meet, not just sit next to each other.



Alex talked about why music pulls people into the present in a way that's different from sitting meditation. Sound only happens now, whether it's live or recorded, and vibration itself is physically nourishing to the body. He demonstrated "om ah hum" live to show what vibration actually does, separate from a chant carrying devotional or textual content, and got into what changes between improvising and playing a piece you've already composed, including where hope, fear, and judgment show up in that gap. Someone asked whether you need permission to sing chants outside your own tradition. Alex's answer: any genre can support presence, it's not what you do, it's how you do it. He also talked about anxiety as something that can turn into creativity rather than just something to manage.


He closed by citing his teacher Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, one of the great Kagyu masters of our time, who was known for singing spontaneous songs of realization wherever he happened to be. Not a performance, just the natural expression of an awakened mind meeting the present moment. Alex ended by encouraging everyone listening to actually sing or play something themselves. Thank you to Alexander deVaron for opening his home and his piano to us, and to everyone who joined and shared what they're listening to.


What people shared when we asked what music they love, dharma-related or not:

 
 
 
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